Ardiden Limited (ASX: ADV) is pleased to advise that drilling is set to commence in the coming weeks at the 100%-owned, fully permitted, highly prospective Dorothy prospect of the Pickle Lake Gold Project in northwest Ontario, Canada.
The Pickle Lake Gold Project is a continuous District-Scale landholding, located east of Red Lake in the well- endowed Uchi Geological sub-province of north-western Ontario, Canada. Ontario is host to a number of large low to medium grade operations with significant gold ounce Mineral Resource endowments.
These low to medium grade projects are either in production, under construction or currently being assessed including the Great Bear project acquired by Kinross Gold Corporation for C$1.6 billion in 2022. Kinross reported a maiden resource of 5MOZ Au on 13 February 2023.
The fully funded 2023 programme will begin by focusing on the anomalous broad zones at the Dorothy prospect identified in the 2022 drill campaign and from historical drilling results.
The company is initially targeting a total of 24 drill holes covering 3,250m over a strike length of 2.5km to test the large mineralisation halo and semi massive to massive sulphide sequence, identified at both the Dorothy and Dobie prospects in the successful 2022 drill programme.
The holes at the Dorothy prospect have been planned at 100m spacings up to 150m deep targeting confirmation of the recently interpreted geological model. Dorothy has been ranked first priority due to the width of the drilled anomalous zones and large number of cross cutting structures which have been interpreted as potential fluid feeders from the primary structure into these board secondary and tertiary structures which run parallel to, and through the project tenements.
Drilling is set to commence in the coming weeks and will once again be undertaken by Cyr Drilling. The proposed assessable costs for the drill programme are estimated to be A$2.8 million for this phase of drilling.
The 2022 exploration programme tested four gold prospects along a 20 km strike length of the Western Hub. The majority of the 43 holes were targeting the primary structure that hosts the Golden Patricia geological sequence found in the historical Golden Patricia mine. While the drill results derived from the primary structure confirm the Golden Patricia geological style, it is the results from the three holes which targeted the secondary and tertiary structures at Dorothy and Dobie (only 3 from 43 holes) which will form the basis for the 2023 programme.
